Don't Kill The Umpire

If baseball is sometimes called the “pastoral game,” is it because it was once played in pastures? Maybe, but more telling is its attitude toward violence, which plays a peculiar, sublimated role in the sport. In stark contrast to the play of football and other widely appreciated American games like basketball and ice hockey, baseball players are schooled to take their aggressions out on the ball, not on other players. Yet the game was not always one of quiet courage played by gentlemen, as Peter Morris shows in this fascinating historical profile of the rise and fall of violence as a part of our national pastime.